


Truth Isn't Always Beauty

by KDblack



Series: In the Shadow of Midgar [2]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Deception, Gen, I checked, Murder, blatant ignoring of the canon timeline, in my defence it makes no sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24239635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KDblack/pseuds/KDblack
Summary: Tseng is recruited into the Turks shortly before the Wutai War begins. This is not a coincidence. The best lies have a shard of truth to them, after all.
Relationships: Rufus Shinra & Tseng, Tseng & Veld (Compilation of FFVII)
Series: In the Shadow of Midgar [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1765723
Comments: 30
Kudos: 36





	Truth Isn't Always Beauty

Tseng is recruited into the Turks shortly before the Wutai War begins. This is not a coincidence. The best lies have a shard of truth to them, after all.

* * *

President Shinra's truth bleeds through in his wide, hungry smiles, the handshake that lasts a little too long as he welcomes Tseng to the team and assures him that no one will hold his ethnicity against him. His tone is loud and welcoming. His eyes are flat and cold. Tseng knows better than to believe him.

Veld's truth is conveyed with soft, measured words in a string of briefings and debriefings. Easy missions at first: spy on the target, get close to the target, persuade the target to do x or else execute the target. They don't stay easy for long. The other trainees of his generation are still being honed as honey traps or hunting monsters. Tseng learns how to design a murder and conceal it as any number of things. He practices being seen just enough for people to draw the wrong conclusion. He learns every stereotype Midgar has about the people and culture he left behind.

He is being prepared for something.

Tseng's truth is numb and shattered, a sequence of cold images divorced from feelings. There are orders whispered into his ear – orders that will never be put down on paper. Shinra needs a just war. Midgar needs something to avenge. And Ms. Shinra has been poking her nose too deeply into the president's affairs.

She's a nice enough woman for her tax bracket. A philanthropist, when she isn't getting distracted with red carpet appearances. Bright, too. She has little to do with the Turks, but Tseng was sent to shadow her as a training exercise, and he slipped up deliberately a few times. Her young son was more observant than his mother, but she did pick up on Tseng's presence eventually. She recognizes him when he appears outside her door. That makes it easy.

The Turks recruit young. By Shinra's reckoning, he is fifteen years old.

* * *

First objective: get inside. Completed.

Second objective: attract attention. Completed.

Third objective: terminate target in a manner reflective of a Wutaian assassin, according to Midgardian beliefs. Completed.

Fourth objective: wait for security and put up just enough of a fight to make it convincing. Completed.

Fifth objective: wait for extraction.

Wait. Breathe through your mouth so you don't aggravate your broken nose.

Keep waiting. Adjust your position so the handcuffs don't cut so deep into the arm you landed on when they threw you in here.

Wait some more. Believe in your teammates. Believe in Shinra. 

Help will come, eventually.

* * *

When Veld finally arrives to confirm the mission's success, Tseng has been locked up for forty-eight hours. The bone fragments in his nose make a horrible sound every time he moves his head. His arm is on fire. Fresh bruises pepper his skin beneath the hideous costume he cobbled together from pieces stolen in the slums. He is unrecognizable.

“Good work,” Veld says, and unlocks his handcuffs. “Pity you died in custody.”

Tseng blinks at him, silent, uncomprehending. 

“Can you walk?”

Slowly, he shakes his head. It's the truth. After two days spent tied to a chair, he can hardly even feel his legs.

“We'll say you're drunk, then,” Veld decides. He hauls Tseng out of the crude metal seat and settles him on the floor. Then, with efficient and clinical motions, he strips Tseng out of the costume and pulls him into an anonymous infantry jumpsuit. 

Tseng assists as much as he is able. When he's dressed, Veld takes off his own jacket and drapes it over Tsung's head. Then he picks Tseng up and slings him casually over his shoulder.

“Drag the body in,” he tells someone standing outside the cell. “Get it positioned correctly. We're looking for ritual suicide to spite the Shinra dogs, not suspect killed in custody. Pain?”

“Five,” Tseng lies. Every time one of them moves, his ribs jab something inside of him.

Veld shakes his head. “Pity your mission went so badly. Kalm Fangs can be nasty to the unprepared.”

Tseng says nothing. He is detached from his body. He watches from above as Veld carts him through the hallways, grumbling about hungover recruits sleeping in places they don't have clearance for whenever someone stops to gawk. Veld takes him to the nearest infirmary, only to immediately slip sideways through a hidden door Tseng's never seen before. The Turks have their own medic station. The girl on staff raises an eyebrow when she sees Tseng, but says nothing.

* * *

When Tseng is ready for duty again, the war is well and truly under way. Guard has been doubled on the company's remaining VIPs. The president is being very publicly grief-stricken and filled with righteous rage. Being visibly Wutaian, Tseng cannot be seen with him. He is assigned elsewhere.

Rufus Shinra is under house arrest. Tseng is not told why, only that he is to keep the child within his own rooms. He nods, recalling vague memories of a suspicious boy with hair like sunshine. The death of Rufus' mother will have likely honed that paranoia. It will probably be difficult to keep him under control. But it cannot be more difficult than sleeping with the memory of his mother screaming as Tseng holds her down and draws one, ten, a hundred cuts into her flesh.

The first thing Tseng remembers Rufus saying to him is this: “Was it fun?”

He doesn't reply.

“I suppose not,” Rufus says at last. His hair is slicked and perfect. His eyes are flat and dead. “Weapons don't generally get to enjoy themselves, do they.”

“Please don't speak of such things, sir,” Tseng says quietly. President Shinra has already ordered the death of his wife for prying. He has no doubt the man will treat his son's questions with the same care. For a second, he feels nothing but the thin column of Rufus' throat giving way under his hands.

Rufus tilts his head to the side, politely uncomprehending. Or perhaps comprehending too much. “Of course. Am I permitted to know what I can speak of?”

“Whatever you wish, sir.”

That gets him nothing but a faint hum of acknowledgment. They don't speak any further that day. But then, they don't have to. Rufus' voice is still coiling through Tseng's ears like smoke. He spends the next several years waiting for Rufus to have him killed. 

It would be easy. Tseng is Wutaian in Midgar. Worse, he's a loose end. But the boy says nothing to his father as Tseng climbs the ranks of the Turks. He simply watches with his dead blue eyes. Even when his ties to Avalanche are revealed and he's detained, bruised and blindfolded, in one of the Turks' offices, he stays quiet.

* * *

Rufus Shinra's truth is told in the curve of his smile when Tseng gets on his knees and begs for his mens' lives.

**Author's Note:**

> AU where President Shinra had Tseng murder his wife in order to get public support for the Wutai War.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The King and All of His Men](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28093764) by [KDblack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KDblack/pseuds/KDblack)




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